Woman kills boyfriend with shoe after night at bar

HOUSTON (AP) — It started out as a normal night where Ana Trujillo and her boyfriend went out to a local Houston bar they often frequented. They enjoyed a couple bottles of wine, and tossed back a few shots of tequila.

But the evening soured, she told police, after another man approached her at the bar. He offered to buy her a drink, angering her boyfriend, Alf Stefan Andersson, a respected professor and researcher at the University of Houston. The two argued and left the bar in a huff.

Yet how she became so incensed, or scared, that she wielded her stiletto shoe as a deadly weapon — repeatedly bashing Andersson with the heel, leaving him dead in a bloody crime scene — remains unclear. Trujillo maintains she acted in self-defense after Andersson became violent.

"Somebody is dead. The motive doesn't change the charges," Sara Marie Kinney, a spokeswoman for the Harris County District Attorney's office, said Wednesday. "She confessed to doing it. The reason and all of that will play out in court."

Trujillo, 44, was charged with murder and remained jailed Wednesday. Bond is set at $100,000, according to court documents. Her attorney, Lott Brooks, said he has requested a physical and mental evaluation of Trujillo. He said she maintains self-defense, but he still has not been able to have a lengthy conversation with her about the facts of the case.

The couple, as they did on many weekend evenings, went to Bodegas, a taco shop in Houston's museum district, late Saturday, said Walter Garcia, an assistant manager at the restaurant.

Both are not Houston natives. Andersson, 59, is from Sweden and has no family in the city, Kinney said. Trujillo, a Mexican native, has a daughter who also doesn't live in the city, she added.

Andersson was a regular at Bodegas, though, and usually came alone, he said. But for parties, like Cinco de Mayo or on Fridays when the restaurant brings bands, the couple came together.

Garcia never saw them argue. Most times, he said, they just ordered drinks. Andersson liked beer and wine. On occasion, they ordered a meal.

"I knew him. He was a good person," Garcia said. "They looked like a normal couple."

After the couple left Bodegas last weekend, they continued to argue, Kinney said. When they arrived at Trujillo's apartment around 2 a.m. Sunday, the fight escalated, she said. Trujillo told police that Andersson grabbed her, so she pulled his hair so hard that some of it remained in her hand. But she told police that didn't faze him, so she grabbed her shoe and beat him.

Neighbors told police they heard shouting. It sounded, they said, like furniture being moved, Kinney said.

At 3:44 a.m. Sunday, about two hours after the couple arrived at the apartment, police arrived at the scene. Who called them remains unclear, Kinney said.

Houston police and the district attorney's office are still looking for information. Trujillo was arrested for driving while intoxicated in 2010, though no other convictions turn up in her criminal record.

Garcia said Andersson was a wonderful man, and well-liked at Bodegas.

"Everybody, now, we're very sad, angry with her, because he was customer No. 1," he said.

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